The Digital Practices of African Americans: An Approach to Studying Cultural Change in the Information Society

by Roderick Graham

How do social scientists study the impact of social networking sites on racial identity formation? How has the Internet impacted the accumulation of social and cultural capital? By synthesizing insights across a variety of disciplines, this book builds an original theoretical perspective through which these and other questions about core social processes can be addressed. Three case studies of how African Americans use information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used to illustrate this theoretical perspective. They show how groups can leverage ICTs to overcome historical inequalities. The book argues that the lenses through which scholars and society’s leaders think about new technology place too much emphasis on the technological and economic aspects of ICTs, and not enough on the impact of ICTs on social processes at the everyday level.

164 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2014

About the author

Edinburgh-born Roderick Graham was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh before serving with the Royal Army Education Corps as staff officer for education at the East Africa Command.

On leaving the army, he went on to pursue a long and varied career in television and radio as a writer, freelance director and producer. He produced the double Emmy award-winner Elizabeth R in 1971, and from 1974 to 1977 he was the producer of fifty-four episodes of the long-running BBC police series Z Cars. He was appointed head of drama at BBC TV Scotland and produced and directed A Scots Quair, Boswell for the Defence and Sutherland’s Law among many others. He eventually returned to freelance directing and worked on the well-known TV series Juliet Bravo, One by One and All Creatures Great and Small. He also wrote and directed two series of children’s archaeology for BBC TV, seven radio plays and one four-part radio biography of Sidney Smith.

Roderick Graham has also taught writing and directing at Napier and Leeds Metropolitan Universities, Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He is the author of the critically acclaimed John Knox: Democrat (Hale, 2001) and The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume (Tuckwell Press, 2004, paperback edition by Birlinn, 2005). In 2007 Birlinn published An Accidental Tragedy: The Life of Mary, Queen of Scots. In this readable and insightful biography, Roderick Graham challenges many of the traditionally held perceptions of the Scottish queen, and examines her roles as a woman, a politician and a monarch.

Roderick Graham now lives in Edinburgh.